Milwaukee Personal Injury Lawyer - Truck Accidents

Investigators Focus on Cause of Truck Wheel Separation

David Lowe — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:51:30 GMT

Last week I wrote about the uninsured motorist coverage issues raised by the news story about a Mequon, Wisconsin motorist killed by a flying truck tire that had come loose, crossed a highway median, and flown into the victim's windshield.
The victim was later identified as Krishna Chintamaneni, the highly regarded chief of staff of Milwaukee's St. Francis Hospital.

But the truck owner has now been found.

Traffic cameras captured the image of three trucks that passed through the scene about the time of the accident, and authorities were able to contact the owners, one of whom discovered that its truck was missing a driver's side tire. Today's story focuses on the truck owner's poor record of safety inspections, and the driver's record of speeding violations. So now it appears that this will not be a case involving uninsured motorist coverage after all, but probably one of negligent truck inspection.

Reporter Rick Romell, who has written on truck safety issues before, reports that there have been at least seven deaths this year from truck tire separations, usually caused by poor truck maintenance practices and truck part corrosion from highway salts and chemicals.

In 1992, the National Transportation Safety Board published a study on the problem of truck wheel separation, which made several recommendations to address the problem:

Develop guidelines for the inspection and maintenance of all types of medium/heavy truck wheels.

Develop practices that specify how often truck wheel bearings should be examined.

Promote an educational program on proper wheel tightening procedures through carriers, manufacturers, and government.

Encourage manufacturers to provide a labels with recommended practices to torque wheel fasteners.

Educational program on proper wheel tightening procedures by the carriers and manufacturers

Encourage States to separate wheel defects from tire defects in future accident data collection efforts.

Truck safety equipment manufacturers are analyzing the problem of wheel separation too, offering tire safety products designed to prevent the kind of accident that happened here.

Hopefully, organizations involved in highway safety like the Transportation Research Board will take a look at systems to improve truck inspection to reduce the likelihood of this kind of tragedy from happening again.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Car and Motorcycle Accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by David Lowe

Motorist Killed By Flying Truck Tire Raises Uninsured Motorist Coverage Questions

David Lowe — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:39:34 GMT

In a bizarre tragedy Thursday evening, a Mequon, Wisconsin motorist was killed when a truck tire came loose from a truck traveling southbound on I-43, bounced over a retaining wall, and struck the windshield of the man's 2007 BMW. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner announced today that the victim, Krishma Chintamaneni, 55, died at the scene.

The driver of the semi from which the tire came loose did not stop at the scene, and it is unclear whether the truck driver was aware that a tire had come loose or that an accident had occurred. Authorities are searching for the driver of the semi, and are asking that anyone with information call the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department at (414) 278-4788.

The tragedy raises the question of whether an accident victim can recover compensation for injury or death when the accident is caused by a tire or part that flies off of another vehicle that flees or leaves the scene of the accident. The answer would seem to be "yes."

If the victim has automobile liabilty insurance in Wisconsin, and in many other states, there is a mandatory level of uninsured motorist coverage. Where a physical contact has occurred between the fleeing vehicle and the victim's vehicle, UM coverage applies and affords compensation.

So the question is whether there is "physical contact" between two vehicles when the contact consists of a piece of debris thrown by one vehicle into another. There is a case on point in Wisconsin. In Theis v. Midwest Sec. Ins. Co., 232 Wis.2d 749, 606 N.W.2d 162 (2000) it was held that uninsured motorist coverage applies where a part of a truck flies off and strikes the car of the victim having uninsured motorist coverage. In the Theis case a "truck leaf spring" was propelled into the victim's vehicle by an unidentified passing semitractor, and the court held that there was UM coverage, even though there was no contact between the victim's vehicle and the passing semitractor and even though it was unknown whether leaf spring came from the passing semitractor or another unidentified motor vehicle. It was enough that the passing semi propelled the piece into the victim's car.

There are other situations where, unfortunately, uninsured motorist coverage has been denied. It has been established that in the case of a "miss and run", that is where a vehicle swerves near but does not strike the victim's car, causing the victim to loose control and get into an accident, there is no uninsured motorist coverage. Physical contact is required. Progressive Northern Ins. Co. v. Romanshek, 281 Wis.2d 300, 697 N.W.2d 417, 2005 WI 67 (Wis. Jun 07, 2005).

Similarly, earlier this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held in the DeHart case that UM coverage was not mandated by the Wisconsin insurance statutes for an accident in which an unidentified vehicle made contact with a third vehicle, which caused the victim to lose control of her vehicle, because there was no "hit" to the victim's automobile.

It is therefore clear that for UM coverage to apply in Wisconsin there must be a physical contact with the insured victim's vehicle, and the contact must be one caused in some way by a fleeing or uninsured vehicle.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Tractor-Trailer Accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by David Lowe

Electronic Logs Would Keep Tired Truckers Off The Road

David Lowe — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:38:51 GMT

Trucking safety advocates are proposing that the government follow the European model that requires trucking companies to use an electronic system to record their hours of work and rest, instead of the paper log system that drivers can easily falsify to allow them to remain on the road more hours per day than permitted by federal law.

A Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel story by Rick Romell sheds light on the problem of truck accidents caused by driver fatigue.
Federal rules require that truck drivers drive no more than 11 consecutive hours after 10 consecutive hours of rest. (A good short history of regulatory struggle over hours of service appears in Jeff Lowe's blog here.) As Romell points out in a companion article about Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration fines imposed on trucking firms, truck drivers have the incentive to falsify the hours of work and rest because drivers are paid by the hour, and most are non-union employees that earn no overtime. At the same time, trucking firms have the same incentive to skirt hours of service regulations because, as Romell points out, "The longer a driver stays on the road, the less those additional hours cost his employer."

There is no good reason to avoid the European approach to highway safety. Every year there are hundreds of avoidable accidents that could be prevented by keeping tired truck drivers off the road. Forcing the trucking industry to switch to the electronic system for tracking driver hours is good policy.

For more information on this subject matter, please refer to the section on Tractor Trailer Accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by David Lowe

Truck Driver Fatigue Tracked In Survey

David Lowe — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:06:53 GMT

A survey of truck drivers conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reveals that In any given month, at least one out of eight long-distance truck drivers dozes at the wheel.

A story about the survey published in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel summarizes the causes of accidents involving truck drivers in this way:

A 2006 government study of large-truck crashes involving death or injury found that 11.6% were caused by "non-performance" in which the driver fell asleep, was disabled by a heart attack or seizure or was physically impaired for some other reason.Thirty-eight percent of the crashes, meanwhile, were caused by bad decisions - driving too fast, following too closely or misjudging other drivers' actions. More than 28% were attributed to the driver not paying attention, getting distracted or failing to adequately observe what was happening.Automobile drivers suffer from fatigue, too, Osiecki said. He pointed to the federal study of large-truck crashes, which found that in car-truck accidents, the car driver was twice as likely as the trucker to be fatigued.

Schneider National, a trucking firm based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is adressing the issue with an innovative truck driver treatment program for sleep apnea, a program that has been lauded by the National Sleep Foundation.

Hopefully, addressing driver fatigue proactively as Schneider has done will become the standard for the trucking industry and help avoid tragic highway accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by David Lowe

Are Campaign Contributions Compromising Highway Safety?

David Lowe — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 09:01:28 GMT

How safe would you feel driving down the highway beside a 97 foot long assembly of four trucks linked together, with the trailing three mounted on each other and only their rear wheels in contact with the pavement? Can you imagine any good reason why our government would permit this dangerous combination on our streets and highways?

Smells like trucking industry money at work.

Saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations, or "four ways" for short, is the industry phrase used to describe this method of cheaply transporting new trucks to dealers. Four trucks traveling piggy-back style requries fewer trips and fewer drivers. The dangers of four-ways, have been discussed elsewhere. As blogger Steven Hill observes, "From the side, if one roars by you on the road, they look like elephants holding each others' tails with their trunks-only much, much larger and more dangerous. "
The non-profit Partnership For Safe Driving puts it this way:

So, we will soon be seeing the equivalent of small trains driving alongside us on the highways, except that these trains will not be on tracks and the "conductors" will have no way of controlling the rear end of their trains.

Today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports on trucking industry campaign contributions to key congressmen while proposed legislation was before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that eventually was passed as part of the 2005 highway reauthorization bill. The Bush Administration's Federal Highway Administration is set to issue regulations to implement the bill, and trucking industry interests are pushing for an interpretration that would allow these dangerous loads on our nation's highways. Steven Hill of Thomas Paine.com notes that there is some opposition to the new regulations, including some Republicans and truck driver groups, but observes that Congress has largely been AWOL on the issue.

It seems, once again, that campaign contributions may be working against protection of the public, underscoring the need for campaign finance reform.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by David Lowe

Families Of Truck Crash Victims Lobby Congress

David Lowe — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:06:51 GMT

This week, families of truck crash victims are lobbying Congress and the Bush administration to establish stricter rules that would reduce truck drivers' hours on the road without rest and increase the number of safety inspections, among other recommendations. I have commented previously on highway safety advocacy efforts, and the challenges these efforts face in view of the improper trucking company influence on the Bush Administration. This important effort is worthy of our attention and support. Hopefully, Washington will listen.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by David Lowe